In two weeks, Shelby Sapusek and I will be speaking at the GAA Publishing and Premedia Conference. Our Tuesday morning general session is entitled “Color Control Myths and Mysteries,” and then later that afternoon we’ll have a breakout session for color control questions and answers. The presentation will be unique in that Shelby will bring her 17 years experience with newspaper design, editing and production to the conversation while I’ll bring almost 30 years of expertise making color technology work.
As we prepare for the presentation, we are going to share some of our research and planning. This week I’ll share how we plan to kick the presentation off with some color optical illusions like the one pictured above.
Can you trust your eyes with color?
It’s been said – and I agree – that your eyes are one of the best color evaluation instruments available. The problem is your eyes can be fooled. Sometimes they are fooled by simple understandable things like surround colors. That’s what you’re seeing in the image above and you can view the interactive version of the illusion at the e-chalk website.
In the example, squares “A” and “B” are the same color. Your eye can be easily fooled by these types of surround color issues. Your eyes can also be fooled when they are tired or as you age. As a 48-year-old male, it’s unlikely I can see yellow as well as Shelby (who is younger) can.
Another area to be concerned about is the light source used to illuminate your printed piece. Some ink combinations will result in a phenomena called metamerism. This occurs when the same sample appears to be different colors under different light sources such as daylight, incandescent or florescent as three examples.
Check back next week for more hints about our talk
I don’t want to give too much away and steal all Shelby’s thunder for next week. Make sure to check back in a week when Shelby will share the main topic areas we plan to make part of our presentation at the conference.
Also, it’s not to late to join us at the conference. You can learn more and register here.
[…] talk, which we will be presenting at the GAA Publishing and Premedia Conference next week. In his preview, he introduced an interesting optical illusion and discussed whether or not we could trust our eyes […]